


The Kill Jar

by dawngloaming



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Capes, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Angst, Atheism, Batman: The Killing Joke, Bisexual Bruce Wayne, Bisexual Female Character, Bisexual Harleen Quinzel, Bisexual Male Character, Catholicism, Child Neglect, Christianity, Closeted Character, Crossdressing, Depression, Developing Relationship, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/F, F/M, First Time, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Gang Violence, Gay Joker (DCU), Gay Male Character, Happy Ending, Hate Crimes, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, Lesbian Character, Lesbian Pamela Isley, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Misogyny, One-Sided Attraction, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Poverty, Recreational Drug Use, Religion, Roommates, Scars, Sexism, Slow Burn, Trauma, also Jeannie/Jack, as is jarley/mad love, batcat is peripheral, only tagging main ships, that isn't mutual either, which isn't mutual btw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:14:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22842325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dawngloaming/pseuds/dawngloaming
Summary: Following the lives of Jack Napier and his friends as they grow up and enter college. An exploration of personal relationships to sexuality, religion, and sense of identity, amongst other things. As much platonic love as romantic love.
Relationships: Batman/Joker, Jack Napier/Bruce Wayne, Joker (DCU)/Bruce Wayne, Pamela Isley/Harleen Quinzel
Comments: 15
Kudos: 30





	1. Butterflies in a Hornet’s Nest

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this is a revamp of a previous (abandoned) fic of mine!  
> Also, this is FULL of headcanons and creative license. But overall, my Jack is inspired not just by TKJ but also Tom King's Joker.  
> Furthermore, the talk of internalized homophobia and Catholicism are very much based on my own experience!

Gotham buzzes and drones and hums like a hornet’s nest. Busy, busy, busy...everyone crawls over one another, delicate wings beating against each other’s tired faces, pushing past in the crowd. But through it all, amidst the horde...there are individuals...struggling to stay within the sights of those who can SEE them through the smog-filled air. Struggling to carve space for themselves to just stand and BE...to breathe...to embrace...without a gun to the head or a clock ticking overhead. 

Two such individuals, two sickly-pale teens of The Narrows, threadbare with eyelids purpling from exhaustion, sit on a curb and watch the sun dip down. It falls away in a blaze like a dumpster fire, slinking away, somewhere beyond the crowded stacks of old apartments and blinding-smooth banker buildings that shine in the saturation of polluted sunset. Gotham plunges into its fleeting beauty, the dusty city only ever glittering in the shadow of the too-brief but never-brief-enough night. 

Night in these dim, cramped honeycomb streets is no time for children (not even at the mature age of 14) to be out, and it crawls with cannibalistic wasps hunting for prey. But Jack Napier and Jeannie Holland will go inside soon. They’re good kids. 

They just want an hour to themselves. Just one hour, out of a full day spent living for the approval of others…others who will never give them that validation. Only they can offer each other such a comfort. One boy and one girl, thick as thieves...they are the only ones who can make each other feel seen, in this whole rambling city of eyes. Seen in the real way, not scrutinized or glanced over. 

No one looks at Jack and actually GETS him the way Jeannie does. He is a waifish boy with a sharp and faintly freckled face, wreathed in too-long auburn curls, with the slouch of a gangly height he hasn’t quite grown into. His only remarkable features are a pair of bright green eyes, catlike and glinting with both the lethal distance of distrust and the boundary-crossing gleam of mischief. That pair of eyes, as well as his wide, alternatingly exuberant and cutting smile...but not everyone gets to see THAT. His thin lips usually rest in a fairly pleasant, placid, deceptively neutral line….deceptive, given that Jack Napier has never felt neutral once in his life. He wouldn't even know the meaning of such a word.

He may not be known for his looks, but people (at school, at the family butcher shop, in his small three person home) look at him and see certain characters they’ve grown accustomed to: the ever-giggling and unknowable class clown, the teacher’s-pet science geek, the sullen butcher boy in his stained apron, or the disappointingly effeminate yet still-dutiful son. But Jeannie sees a more complete picture. She sees that he is all these people and more. He is JACK, and she expects him to be nothing more and nothing less. He is playful, he is volatile, a dreamer and a schemer...a heart that WANTS and WANTS and WANTS...hands that endlessly design and endlessly create...Jack is a storm. 

In turn, no one looks at Jeannie and actually GETS her the way Jack does. She is a slim girl of average height, with long, straight hair of a natural (dirty) blonde, and alert hazel eyes that border on a regular brown. She has a soft smile of near-perfect teeth, ALMOST clear skin, and the agreeably rounded and small features of a barbie. She stands in striking contrast to Jack and his prominent angled features, and would be considered beautiful if she wasn’t so painfully average. Like Jack, she simply is not known for her looks. 

She is, however, known to play a series of roles that all boil down to “goody two shoes.” She is the pride of her watchful parents, an A student who focuses hard on grades and band (the aim is a clarinet scholarship) and spends time with other studious girls and absolutely NO “distracting” boys. That is, except for Jack. 

He receives the exception on the basis of being Jeannie’s first childhood friend and lifelong neighbor. They are each other’s window view, after all. And Jack sees through her as clearly as she sees his enthusiastic waving, across the gap of the street and through the separation of glass. He sees JEANNIE...but a version that no one else knows. 

She is blunt with a sharp wit. She’s as often frustrated and full of rageful tears as she is compassionate and (outwardly) patient. She sees beauty in the strangest places, and thinks with a practical mind that Jack envies. She is JEANNIE and there is no true way he could ever sum her up. He would never want to. 

He refuses to place a box and expectations around this deceptively docile yet untameable girl, especially when everyone only ever ASKS her to be what they want her to be: good. Jack detests good. He knows what it’s like to be treated like a dog, asked to roll over and fetch and sit and heel. He knows HE isn’t good. And neither is Jeannie, or so she claims, defiant with a tilted-up chin. He chooses to take her word on it. No one who knows him and still likes him could ever be GOOD, naturally. 

He has a persistent sinking feeling that there is something dark and sinful festering in his soul. Surely anyone who gets close can smell it. But well, when the two of them sit together on their little curb, sharing popsicles and laughing at the world...when they’re all caught up in feeling bright as the sun’s golden-red retreat...black and white words like good and bad simply cease to exist. 

Side by side, watching cars pass like flashes of paint across a canvas, it’s easy to feel like nothing could ever break or even TOUCH what the two shared. No matter what cynical young Jack might say…it was innocent, it was bright, and it was clean. He felt it, she felt it. This was the purity of lifelong friendship. But in Gotham? Well, pure and clean are fleeting concepts, if they even exist at all. In Gotham, everything rusts under the relentless beating of the rain.


	2. Caught in a Spiderweb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More of Jack's home life (entirely of my own invention). Warning for: homophobic slurs, misogyny, alcoholic parent, abusive parent (implied)

Jack enters the house with a quiet shuffle, as is the daily ritual. He slowly clicks the door closed, toes out of his tennis shoes and then softly creeps across the creak-prone floorboards on the balls of his socked feet. The sun has just set, meaning his father is likely (unfortunately) still awake…probably watching the house’s only tv, located in the small master bedroom. His mother, however, is most certainly still out. It takes her a while to get back from her cleaning jobs. 

Sometimes she has to get back from homes as far as Manhattan. She takes public transportation to save gas money...but it sure doesn’t save time. By the time she gets home, she is far too exhausted to do anything but soak the pain out of her aching back and then retire to bed. Seeing as her husband refuses to pick up “women’s work,” the cleaning and the cooking fall to the only willing and capable hands left in the house...Jack’s hands. His father says that if he’s gonna act like “such a fairy,” he might as well put “those delicate hands to work on something they look made for,” stirring, folding, serving. 

He tiptoes to the kitchen, attempting not to alert his distracted father to his presence. He isn’t in the mood for a conversation with a drunk. But well, his father isn’t yet far gone enough to let Jack fade into the background. He lumbers out, with a glowering gaze, to lean against a doorway. Jack turns from his crouch in front of the fridge, makes eye contact, and then immediately averts his gaze, almost demure. 

“Boy,” his father states, in his typical manner. He never calls Jack by any other name. It’s as if he seeks to both disown his “girlish” son as his child...or as if he seeks to remind Jack of the roles he consistently fails to live up to...the roles that make up BOY. He was never terribly good at that particular game... “boy”...though he was never sure about the specific arenas of his failure. Perhaps it was nothing deeper than the LACK of depth in his “faggy” little voice. He makes an effort to stay quiet in front of his father, answering verbally only when something is directly asked of him. 

Usually, “boy,” is followed by some demand (never a request)...but this time, a grin splits his father’s lips. This is not a reassuring grin. It’s shark-like in that ruddy face. “Boy, you bagged that chick yet, the one you’re always fooling around with outside before you come home? You hit that leggy blonde yet?” Jack is stunned at the question. 

At the technically-adult age of 18, he can affirm that there is definitely nothing sexual about his friendship with Jeannie Holland. If the two were ever going to be anything other than friends, it would have come up before NOW. But Jack has never seen her that way. To be fair, he’s never seen anyone that way, he thinks. Images flit by his mind’s eye ever so quickly, then: thin white shirts tight over firm pectorals, boys guzzling water on the soccer field, his english teacher’s steel eyes and peppered stubble. Well, never anyone who means anything. Certainly not JEANNIE. But Jack will say whatever gets him free, so he attempts an easy smirk and a cocky “sure.” He figures that will be that. How naive. Nothing is ever enough for Mr. Napier, when it comes to his middling son. 

Jack realises his mistake when that sharp smile only widens and somehow sharpens ever still. He turns back around to idly shuffle the cans in the fridge, no longer looking for anything to eat, just trying to look busy. He hears footsteps approach, heavier than should be possible without shoes. Ugh. Not off the hook yet, clearly. 

His shoulders quickly tense and are just as quickly forced to “relax” by a firm hand, clapped onto him in a mimicry of fatherly warmth. “That’s great, sport. Finally growing into a man, are ya? You’ll have to bring her by for a little photo when that old Winter Formal rolls around, dontcha think,” his father starts. “We can show Granny, maybe. She always asks about you on holidays and you have precious little to say. We can tell her you’ve got a little girlfriend.” 

Jack fakes a hollow laugh that cracks into too-shrill territory, a true comic book “Ha Ha Ha.” His father gives him another harsh clap on the shoulder and laughs back, a booming sound, as he retreats back into the bedroom. Well...Fuck. Jack Napier does NOT have a girlfriend. Whatever shall he do?


	3. Out of the Web and Into the Flytrap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More Jeannie! I love her...she may be a canon character but she's pretty much an oc at this point  
> Also, peep the voice headcanon! My ideal Joker has a Gotham (New York) accent and occasionally lapses into his transatlantic accent (which, it has been pointed out to me, is actually more of a feminine transatlantic accent) for fun

Jack hurries home from school, sleight frame bundled into oblivion by his mother this morning, prior to her leaving for work. He’s forgotten to strip the layers all day (well, at some point, DECIDED not to), which makes some bizarre sense, despite the laughter it drew from his classmates (there goes Jack, again, on his bullshit). Partially because being a thin reed of a person leaves one at a constant lack of warmth, even when it’s winter and the classrooms are heated. But partially because the compression of the layers is like a hug. 

It reminds him that even through the perpetual absence of both parents...his mother thinks about him and worries...at the very LEAST she worries. And that...that’s something Jack can (NEEDS to) label as love. He collects evidence that he is loved, that he is NOTICED, with fervent near-obsession, pinning warm heartfluttering (yet guiltily stomach-sinking) moments like butterflies to the corkboard of his heart. This is a secret of his, hidden like his reddish-brown ponytail, tucked under a mustard-colored knit cap. 

On the way, Jack ponders what he’ll do about the Jeannie Situation that came up the night before. He thinks to himself, recklessly speedwalking with long strides through the icy streets, hands thrust in his coat pockets, that his father will likely forget all about it. He giggles beneath the scarf obscuring the lower half of his face, wondering why he bothers to lie to HIMSELF. With his luck, his father won’t forget, drunk or not. It’s the goddamn Winter Formal anyway. It’s annual and it’s inescapable. Hell, his father is catering deli meats for the event. So, how on Earth will he get OUT of the situation? 

While deep in thought, he doesn’t fully register Jeannie sidling up to him til he feels a hand fishing his palm out of his coat and lacing its fingers through his own. He isn’t startled, though. Some part of him must have known she was there. Jeannie likes to try and surprise him, but he’s got a sort of sixth sense for when certain people are near. It’s almost as if he subconsciously smells her before he sees her. Not that she smells of anything other than a vague warm-laundry scent with hints of some rose-scented product. It’s instantly comforting, though. 

He glances down to his left, smiling with a pleased squint of the eyes, the only part of his face currently visible. But then, of course, the weight of reality comes crashing down on him. He shouldn’t be comforted by seeing Jeannie NOW...he should feel even more STRESSED...she’s the subject of his worries, after all. He blushes at yet another flashback to his father’s words, all the more embarrassing to think about with Jeannie right in front of him. 

Jeannie catches the sudden change in his demeanor: the sudden widening of his eyes and knitting of his brows, the sudden blush creeping across his pale celtic complexion. “Jackie-O...what’s the matter, huh? I KNOW I didn’t scare ya...I never manage, thanks to your over-perceptive ass. ‘Sides. You LOOKED happy to see me just a second ago...bad timing? What’s up?” Jeannie gives a tentative little smile, now grasping his hand in BOTH of her own mittened palms. 

Jack shakes his head emphatically, causing Jeannie to quirk a quizzical brow at him. He quickly frees a hand from her gentle grip and yanks her own beanie (pink covered in white hearts and topped with a pompom) down over her eyes, taking off in a little run as she gasps with playful outrage. “Nothin’s UP, buttercup!” he shouts over a shoulder, laughing as he jogs a measly few paces ahead of her. Jeannie, with hat now righted, buoyantly bounds over with that face he loves: lit up with the thrill of chase and challenge. He expects her to rush over and push him, just shy of too rough, but ends up blinking in confusion as she rushes past him several more paces. Before he has a chance to think, she whirls back around, long hair fanning out around her, and dashes straight at him, laughing in her light and bubbly way. He instinctively backs up a bit, barking a laugh of surprise that’s cut short as Jeannie knocks into him with her whole body, knocking the wind OUT of him. He looks down to find her arms tightly wound about his waist, her chin leaning against his chest as she looks up, snowflakes in her lashes, smug little smile on her lips as if she’d won some victory. 

“I’ll ask again, Jackie...what the hell’s eating you?” she whispers, voice far kinder than her teasing words. He can’t lie to her. Never to her, the most reliable person he’s ever had in his life. Lying to anyone he loves is an impossible feat that triggers an obvious tell: laughter, a sound that’s always filled Jack’s life with both bright flashes of color and choking cacophony. He sighs, finally giving in to that insistent gaze, and drapes his arms over her shoulders. “Winter formal, Jeannie-baby. Oh, it’s truly a tragedy! Nooobody ever wants me, do they?” he cries with theatrical melodrama, affecting a feminine transatlantic accent, and surely the pout of some old starlet, though the scarf still wrapping half his face makes it hard to tell. In any case, Old Hollywood has been an obsession of his since childhood, and it jumps out frequently. 

Jeannie frowns, and very seriously looks him in the eye. “But they do,” she states flatly, ever so softly. “Huh?” Jack breathes, the visible part of his face screwed up in doubt. “They do. I do,” she mumbles, now pressing her face into his chest. “Jeannie...whaddya mean?” he squeaks, anachronistic affectation abandoned for his natural Gotham accent. He moves to lift up her face, squishing both cheeks in the process. It would have been comical if it wasn’t for the twin ricocheting of heartbeats. His eyes bounce back and forth over her face as she evasively glances away, smiling in a tight, fake way. In the space between two heartbeats, she tilts up, yanks his scarf down, and says simply, “This.” And then her lips are on his and his breath is gone and...then SHE’S gone, taking off down the streets as he stares, eyes wide and face unreadable. 

“Well,” Jack thinks to himself, “You WERE hoping for a solution.” But calling it a SOLUTION makes his insides squirm like they want to leave his body. What HE wants is to buckle to the ground in a ball, right where he now stands. But his father will be happy. His father will leave him alone. His father will LOVE him, the way he would love a normal son. Jack smacks his own head with quick force. He feels sick for even thinking something so daft. He should just be grateful for the answered prayer. He knows he won’t say no to Jeannie. He can’t. Not just on account of his father, but on account of saying no feeling like...like pushing her away. He can’t do that to her. Never to her. And well, even if he can’t lie to her...what if it WOULDN’T be a lie? He can love her the way he should. He can. Surely. He knows he loves her some way, already. It’s just a little step closer, he thinks, brushing his lips with the fuzzy gloved tips of his fingers. The snakes twisting in his center COULD be butterflies, anyway. He couldn’t know better, could he, ingenue that he is?


	4. Suicidal Butterflies Otherwise Known As Moths

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winter Formal! And Jack being forced to acknowledge that yeah, he might be gay. And yeah, he might have already had an idea. Introducing the only original character in this story, Christopher Brennan. Don't get attached to him, though.

So. This is Winter Formal, huh? Jack Napier is at Winter Formal. With a girl. With a girl who is JEANNIE HOLLAND, his neighbor and best (well, only) friend. What the hell. Holy fuck. He eagerly reaches for the punch, having just seen a student surreptitiously spike it with a bit of something clear. His anxiety seems to possess him, making him knock back the solo cup of pink liquid faster than might be advisable. 

Jeannie is over by a group of girls, because unlike him, she has other friends. In her defense, she had tried to tug him over to say hello, but he had waved her away, answering her complaints with a fake-chill, “Just go have fun, I’ll be over here. I need a minute, that’s all. Yeah, Jeannie, ALREADY. I already need a minute.” And since Jeannie cared a good deal about making sure her single friends didn’t feel ditched, she went off to greet them, turning around once to give an exaggerated pout. Jack is just too nervous to hang around girls, because, well...they’re...beautiful. And he’s awkward. They have a beauty he sort of wishes he could share, and a brightness infused in all their actions and words and colors that he so wishes he could indulge in. He knows being a girl is nothing glamorous, but they still make him feel like an ugly moth pretending to be a butterfly, desperately beating small drab wings in an effort to keep up, hoping to catch the sunlight the way those technicolor creatures do. 

He’s made a real effort, though, to TRY and be something bright and beautiful, tonight. He’s wearing a pair of old Goodwill shoes with spats, aged leather cracking ever so slightly, and a white rose boutonniere to match the corsage which he had shoplifted for Jeannie from some expensive flower shop. He even “allowed” (giddily accepted) Jeannie painting his nails in black and lining his eyes with a bit of smoky shadow (nothing that would draw toooo many looks). Most importantly, though, he’s wearing his new (well, only) tuxedo. He had searched high and low, poring over the thrift shops of three whole boroughs, until he FINALLY found his FAVORITE color. Purple, a royal color, everyone always says. He’s always liked the gallant princes of fairytales. Maybe he wanted to be one. Maybe he wanted to be saved by one. He doesn’t read into it though, because c’mon, he was a kid. Kid’s think weird shit, and it doesn’t all have to mean something, right? 

In any case, he carefully tailored both the jacket and the pants, by hand, to fit his very particular measurements JUST so. His bandaged fingers are a testament to this hard work. Earlier that night, Jeannie rushed across the street to meet him at his doorstep, looking like Cinderella running from the ball, complete with a blonde updo. Her pale blue dress of satin, an heirloom from her mother, flashed in the lights of the night, and her silver sparkly heels from payless clacked loudly as she jogged towards him. He had caught her outstretched hands, and she had gasped at the state of his own, lifting the knuckles to her lips. “My own Clown Prince,” she joked with a wink, teasing his unorthodox fashion choices. It had made him smile, because he could see from the sparkle of her eyes that she didn’t hate it at all. But with his Cinderella off dancing with her girls to some pop anthem, he felt more clown than prince. 

He couldn’t talk to any of the boys, any more than he could talk to the girls. The BOYS make him feel like a butterfly pretending to be a moth. The same issue, only inverted. They make him feel like he’s dulling himself down. Sure, he jokes around in class, and they laugh. Sure, he offers help, time to time, on their chemistry homework. But he never got to know them. He was always a little ways off, even when right in front of them. He’s like a mime behind an invisible wall, at all times. He’s always too busy with work at the butcher shop, anyway, because his father is too cheap to hire more workers that he actually has to PAY. In his father’s defense, though, much of the profit from the shop does go into Jack’s college fund. Per his mother’s request. 

Regardless of the reasons, Jack has no social life to speak of, and doesn’t know the first thing about approaching the clusters of boys scattered across the gym. He watches them with all their riotous jumping (boys don’t dance, they show off and they jump and nod their heads) and their identical monochrome outfits, and tenses at their loud, deep laughter, so unlike his own. He knows he’s on thin ice with them anyway. Right now, he can practically hear the ice creaking and groaning. Being funny (even just “funny to laugh AT”) goes a long way, but it can’t make up for being A Queer. And well, according to his father, tonight, he looks especially like JUST THAT: “A fucking queer.” Even when he was leaving the apartment with a girl on his arm, like HE had demanded of him. Tough crowd, Jack had thought to himself, blinking back tears that threatened to spill. 

Now, all alone, he feels nothing but that spacy anxiety of trying to look cool under strobelights, tapping his foot along with the heavy bass, pounding along with his rapid heart. He looks back and forth, aimlessly. And then looks back again, with purpose this time. Someone snags his eye, having, evidently, been snagged by HIM. Or is there someone next to him...perhaps behind him? Jack checks, but nope, that someone IS in fact looking at him. And it’s not just anyone...it’s that boy...the one from his chem class. The one who sits in the very back, slacking off every day. The tall, built blond with the choppy haircut showing long neglected brown roots. The boy with the “know-it-all” smirk and the lazy amber eyes and the warm-toned skin. Brennan. But what was his first name? Oh, right. Christopher. Christopher Brennan. The “red hood.” 

Jack’s neighborhood is known as a “red hood,” so called for the gang that goes by the same name. They wear red ski masks when they’re up to something, and tuck red bandanas in their pockets otherwise. Certain other parts of Gotham, by contrast, are blue hoods, where the boys strut around with pops of cerulean peeking out of their jeans. It all depends on which gang is running your streets. Sure, the mob also has its own slices of the pie, but some pockets of the city belong to the street kids... and the only-slightly-more-grown lost boys that lead them. 

The leaders don’t tend to last long, seeing as theirs is a very live-fast-die-young existence. But hey, who can condemn the desire for just a little glitter, a little gold, shining within the darkness of Gotham, which only ever grows deeper and darker the longer you last in its jaws. Jack’s mother often lamented over those dreadful dreadful boys, patting him on the hands and thanking the LORD for her sweet son, while her husband rolled his eyes off in the corner. But Jack doesn’t resent these boys, for the most part. Actually, he’s somewhat envious of their quick, nihilistic escape from polite society...slightly envious at the way they chase the light, undeterred like moths about to be zapped for all their idiotic adoration. 

Jeannie once pointed to a pair of golden butterflies, a rare sight in their area, and said that’s what she and Jack were. A pair of butterflies in a city where none exist. Two butterflies in a city of moths bumbling about in the shadows. He’s not so sure about that. His own theory is that Jeannie, himself, the reckless boys...they’re all quite the same, despite the different wings they might wear. It might not always feel that way...but well, what are moths but suicidal butterflies, he thinks, laughing that quiet sort of laugh that’s just an exhale through the nose. He thinks about how they’re all fluttering through the city on weak wings, starving in a concrete garden with no flowers. That perpetually unfulfilled hunger is precisely why he feels no different from the scary, ugly moths of the night. They are ALL just hungry...for light, for sweetness...there’s no difference. It’s all a search for something just out of reach, all a search for God, maybe. His mother says that is all that humans have ever done, since leaving Eden: searched for God, even when hiding from Him, while God searched for them, right back. 

The boys think this God is power, probably. Jack thinks it’s love. His mother says God is love. Either way, it’s something you SUBMIT to. The boys just...get too close in their desire to BECOME the light, and then blink out of existence when it becomes too hot for their frail young bodies to handle. They’re like lucifer, that falling star. Jack would be content to just bask in the light forever, reveling in true love, true submission. He wants something he can actually CHOOSE to submit to, more than anything. Something to kneel to even when he isn’t told to. He’s not sure where THAT particular thought came from, but it sticks around like honey between his fingers. Glancing back at the boy in front of him, the thought flits through his mind like a caged thing wanting to get out. 

As if on cue, THE moment his thoughts began to traverse forbidden territory, the music snaps him back to reality, slowing abruptly with a dimming of the lights. Jack is alarmed, and thinks that surely it's too early for this point in the night. Surely it is? But then again...he and Jeannie HAVE arrived fashionably late, because apparently work can’t wait for anything, not even prom. As a result of his father’s instance that he completed his shift before the night out, Jack had to delay their date in order to scrub the scent of meat and blood away before they could get going. 

Apparently, this is the reason that it’s already time for the dreaded slow dance. Jack just knows his hands will feel absolutely disgustingly sweaty to Jeannie, and how on Earth will he maintain eye contact during something like THAT, and oh GOD he’s already sweating, and probably ruining his nice white dress shirt. He suddenly feels like he’s asphyxiating in a burning house. Jack quickly shuffles out the back exit of the gymnasium, loosening his bowtie a bit frantically, whispering insults at himself under his breath. 

There are (foolishly) no chaperones outside, so a few kids have clustered there to smoke. Jack avoids eye contact. He tells himself he doesn’t care that they’re looking at him as he squeezes through the heavy door and lets it slam. He doesn’t care that they briefly quit talking to observe this sudden intrusion. He couldn’t even say how they look, because he turns his head deliberately away from them, and heads to hide in the only secluded place out there: behind the garbage bins, a good distance from the stoop the teens congregated on. He isn’t sensitive about it being “gross” or anything like that, given his line of work and place of residence. He only desperately hopes the kids don’t bother him. He did his best to mentally project a sentiment of “stay the fuck back” at them, but he’s pretty sure he’s no telepath. 

Despite not caring about the grunginess of his hiding spot, he still bothers to squat on his haunches instead of getting his precious suit dirty. He rests his head between his knees and closes his eyes, hands scratching at the nape of his neck absentmindedly, the curtain of his auburn curls a mild comfort. Quietly, Jack begins to sing an old tune, a comforting favorite of his. He tends to distract himself with music, always. It’s always inside him. Jeannie always laughs at the way he tends to idly dance instead of just standing still, saying he looks like a video game character with idle animation. But Jeannie is the last thing he can bear to think of right now. 

“Somewhere...” he breathes shakily, “beyond the sea...somewhere waiting for me…” Footsteps crunch over the gravel and stop in front of him, by the sound of it. Another voice finishes the lyrics, the boy’s voice sounding like a smoker’s. “Happy we’ll be, beyond the sea, and never again will I go sailing.” Jack stills like a rabbit, breath stopping, heart stopping. Slowly, he lifts his head, nervously brushing back his bangs to look CHRISTOPHER BRENNAN right in the face. The two stare at each other for a moment, Christopher still wearing that permanent smirk, as if it were a mask. 

Jack slips on a mask of his own, suddenly flashing his very distinctly toothy grin. “W-wrong v-verse, uh, Brennan, heh,” he stutters out, not quite as confident sounding as he’d have liked. Christopher raises a dark, scarred eyebrow. “Oh yeah? Excuse me, Mr. Sinatra,” he deadpans, gingerly dropping down to Jack’s level. Jack can’t think of a witty response. Some comedian he would be, hah. His grin folds into a matching smirk, a subconscious act of mimicry, but he can only glance at the other boy out the corner of his eye. 

Out of the blue, Chris speaks up. “We’re the same,” he states, firm and matter of fact. Jack is startled into laughter. “Wh-what-HAHA! What do you m-mean,” he asks, muffling the last dregs of his giggle-fit into his hand. Chris inhales deeply, looking up at the moon, that beautiful beacon of false-hope illuminating the garbage of Gotham. He slides his gaze back to Jack, and looks him straight in the eye, as if he knows he couldn’t possibly be wrong. “You and I...we can’t dance. But not because we can’t DANCE. You came with a girl, I saw. She was glowing tonight, but you weren’t. Even though you tried so hard to look right,” he says, glancing up and down at Jack’s outfit. “But you can’t dance. With her. I came with a girl too. Gorgeous. But I can’t dance either. Not with her. So we’re the same. Get it? We’re the same aren’t we?” he murmurs in his rasping voice, no longer smiling. 

Jack’s heart patters fast and hard, like a rabbit running from a wolf. “I...maybe,” he replies, ripping off one of his bandaids in an effort to diffuse the energy thrumming through his being. Someone has SEEN him. Someone NEW sees him, and in a way he never expected to be seen. A way he’s not even sure he’s seen HIMSELF. Another boy...one of those elusive creatures, one of those wild wolves, those mad moths...is really the sort of creature he fears himself to be: A perversion of nature that can’t be named. Once you name a demon, it’s yours. And once it’s yours, you belong to IT. And then...well, then you are truly damned. Jack bites down on his lip chest shaking faintly with another situationally inappropriate laugh. But c’mon, does he really believe that antiquated shit spinning around in his head? About the damned and all that? 

He’s jolted out of his thoughts when Christopher grabs his palm, studying the brutally unwrapped finger and checking for blood. There’s none, it was only a needle prick. Nothing serious. Christopher stands as he moves to search his pockets, dragging Jack along with him. He pulls out a fine-tip sharpie and pushes up Jack’s sleeve, lifting his head in silent questioning. Jack nods despite the uneasy expression on his face. Chris writes a very small phone number along the inside of his arm, in surprisingly delicate handwriting. “We don’t have to be alone, you know,” he says, capping and pocketing the pen. He walks away, away from the SCHOOL and into the siren-wailing night, without even a glance back. For the second time this month, Jack is too stunned to move. His whole body feels like it’s vibrating, and he needs to do something about it, FAST. He needs to...he needs to find Jeannie. God damn it. He REALLY needs to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can see, this story has a good deal of focus on the experience of being noticeably gender nonconforming, which I know from personal experience (albeit as a gnc woman vs Jack who is a gnc man). Mind you, Jack may struggle with gendered expectations, but this doesn't mean he isn't a man.


	5. Trying to Fly too Soon Out of the Cocoon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter of Jack/Jeannie content. It's gonna get gay after this chapter.  
> Also! Featuring a hypomanic episode on Jack's part.

Jack bursts into the gymnasium, running to find Jeannie. Of course, he’s incredibly quick to hone in on her precise whereabouts. She’s his person, the only one he feels confident enough to say he’s “got” (on most days, that is). They’re tethered in that sense.

He races forward, weaving through the dancing crowd, tripping over himself, before finally skidding to a stop at her side. 

She doesn’t notice, as immersed as she is in her passionately lip synched rendition of some crossover between a popular rapper and an up and coming pop star. 

After a moment of twiddling his thumbs and watching a close-eyed Jeannie silently belt out the chorus, he surrenders to the necessity of saying hi to the gaggle of girls watching the two of them with such barely concealed mirth. 

He waves sheepishly over her shoulder at her small cluster of friends, who wave back in unison, shouting a chorus of “Hi, Jack! What’s up? Where ya been?” over the music. 

He doesn’t really recognize them, but they recognize him on account of Jeannie’s frequent little stories. Not that he knows about those. If he did, he probably wouldn’t dare show his face to the lot of them. 

Just as he begins to shrug in reply, Jeannie whips around, eyes suddenly open and ablaze. Her expression oscillates between supremely annoyed about his prolonged absence, to supremely relieved at his return.

“Jack! Where were you!” she shrieks, hands thrown up, echoing the same question that her troupe of dolled-up pals had just volleyed at him.

“I uh---had an anxiety attack,” he whisper-mumbles, guilty smile widening. It’s not a lie. A lie of omission, though? Maybe, in part. But it’s still the truth. 

Jeannie’s face promptly falls into dismay as she moves to offer a hug. One that Jack catches before her arms close around his middle. 

“Can we--” he drags out, apprehensive as Jeannie blinks owlishly in encouragement. “Canwegohome?” he finally chokes out, all in one breath. 

He attempts to sweeten his plea with another sheepish grin, adding on that, “The dance is almost over, isn’t it?” 

Jeannie’s friends giggle at this, and his face heats up in confusion. 

Making people laugh might very well be Jack’s lifeblood, but when it happens out of the blue, it’s generally a threat. His body has a trained response to go into a defensive mode at such a spontaneous sound. 

“Oh just go. Have a nice night,” one girl pipes up with a suggestive edge and a wink. 

Ah. of course. These are Jeannie’s female friends after all. Not bullies. Not his father. And yet, while their cackling might not be a true threat, his dignity is still in danger. Why? Well, he can feel his blush deepen drastically at the implications of such a seemingly innocent phrase, that’s why.

As if on autopilot, Jack grabs Jeannie by the shoulders and pivots her to the door, quickly ushering her out. He’s had it with this dance, and prays to God Jeannie has too. After all, it’s just now dawning on him that his sudden pushiness might just be rude. Just the slightest bit. Well, rather rude, indeed, if he’s honest with himself.

“Kaythanksyoutoo,” he calls over his shoulder, as if to remedy said rudeness. His voice pitches slightly shrill, coming out thoroughly rushed as he continues to speed himself and his date away from the still-giggling girls. 

Jeannie’s laughing too, as she scuttles to keep up with Jack’s goading. 

Jack’s also laughing, but not necessarily for any joyous reason of his own. He’s just so relieved to hear the sound from Jeannie that he can’t help but join in. She’s infectious, it’s contagious. 

When Jeannie laughs, that always means everything is a-ok. And if it isn’t yet? Then it will be. Always. Without fail, this has been the one wholly positive constant in Jack’s life of perplexingly shaky relations. 

Once the two make it outside, Jack finally stops rushing. He closes his eyes and pauses to take a deep breath of the night air, with all that cold, damp Gotham mistiness soothing his ever-burning cheeks. 

He’s still holding onto Jeannie, pressing down on her shoulders a bit too hard, but he quickly softens his grip with one long, dramatic exhale. Jeannie turns and tilts her head to look up at him with a fond, incredulous expression that she seems to reserve just for Jack. Her only boy.

He opens his eyes and her gazes catches on the length and flutter of his eyelashes. He leans down slightly and tilts his head in the opposite direction of hers, widening his eyes in a mocking way. 

Jeannie is periodically struck by how catlike Jack can be. And how catty, for that matter. 

“ Whaaat?” he says, dragging out the syllables in the petulant voice of a cruel schoolgirl. The effect is undercut by the small smile that sneaks through his act, which Jeannie immediately mirrors. She can’t help it. Neither of the two can help but pick up the smiles of one another, it’s always been a magnetic thing between the two of them. 

“My place or yours,” Jeannie purrs in the overdone voice of some soap opera seductress, quirking a brow. Truthfully, it’s an effort to conceal her very real anxiety over the question with a joking tone. It’s one of those “kidding but not really” ruses. 

Jack, thank the stars, laughs. Albeit, high pitched and behind a hand, as if she caught him off guard. 

Jeannie rolls her eyes at this, grousing, “Oh don’t you go and get all bashful on ME now, you’re the one who rushed us to leave and ‘go home’, mister eagerpants.” She adds a quick, playful sock to the shoulder, as if to emphasize that they’re still only joking. “So, where the hell were ya even thinkin to go? Huh?” she asks, hands on her hips. 

Jack levels her with a deadpan expression, replying in a comedic monotone. “Well, you and I both know it’s gotta be your place.” 

Jeannie snorts, knowing very well what his homelife is like.

“Point taken. Lucky you, ya bastard. My parents are out! We can totally chill there, it’s no biggie,” she says in a fake-breezy tone, trying to make it sound like she, in fact, does not have any secret hopes or ulterior motives. She grabs one of Jack’s hands from off her shoulder and strides forward with him in tow. 

“Yeah, yeah. That’s totally chill,” Jack parrots in a blithe voice. 

His stress has--well, it suddenly seems to have disappeared! Melted away, dripping down the gutters like thawed ice. If he gets to be with Jeannie and only Jeannie for the rest of the night, then all’s well that ends well!

His veins are buzzing with a very different energy, heightened by the cold sparkle of Gotham’s moonlit streets. In fact, he feels as light as that moonlight, with no worries on his shoulders any longer. 

Considering that he was stressed out of his mind a minute ago, this could be considered a disconcerting shift. But never mind that, Jack’s just full of ideas and a drive to share them all, now that he’s free of that suffocating swamp of adolescents and young adults. 

“Hey Jeannie, ya know what would be even moooore totally chill? Putting on some records and throwing our own little 'afterparty', as the kids call it. Y'know? Wouldn’t that be great?” he asks with the cheer of a liberated man, skipping behind her in a way that makes his shoes clack just as much as her heels. 

Jeannie turns to look at him, still holding his hand, but now walking backwards for a few paces as she regards her best friend. 

Yep. Uh huh. She’s certain he’s shifted into one of those moods he gets into. When all the world is, suddenly, a stage. 

Well, she thinks with a wry smile, tonight should be interesting. 

“Sure thing, Jack, your wish is my command,” she pronounces, the end of her sentence slipping into the hoity-toity voice of some old TV butler. The two have come to a stop in front of her building. 

Jeannie curtsies with her flouncy skirt before letting Jack in through the door, like a real, proper host. 

“Woooo!” Jack shouts, letting loose a pirouette on the slick tile floor of the tiny foyer before the rickety vintage elevator. 

“Shh! It’s night time!” Jeannie reminds, eyes sparkling. 

“Oh, right,” Jack whispers back sheepishly. 

Even he knows that his mood is a bit too amped, and he knows this isn’t always the best. This awareness, however, doesn’t prevent him and Jeannie from failing to stifle laughter until they’re both crying in the tiny rusted box that rattles them up to her floor, trying all the while not to jostle it into freezing up, the way it sometimes does. 

Up at Jeannie’s apartment, Jack flounces forward and collapses on the couch like he owns it. He's been here plenty, so at this point, what’s hers is more or less his, too. 

His long spindly body drapes over the entirety of the little pleather thing as he stretches. Again, there's that surprisingly feline flair to his actions. He's like one of those very long, white, oriental cats. The ones with the big ears and the narrow faces. 

Through all his daily awkwardness, and the self conscious way that he carries his body, like its both far too big and far too little, all at once---there's that strange elegance that sneaks out in glimpses. 

In his stretching, Jack’s white button down slips out from where it was tucked into his pants, and Jeannie pretends her eyes didn’t just flicker that way. 

She gingerly sits on the footstool in front of the couch, staring, instead and rather pointedly, at Jack’s cheshire smile, aimed so aimlessly at the ceiling. It’s lit up in full, sparkling, high wattage tonight. 

“Dj, drop the beat!” he cries out, flinging up his arms eagerly. 

His overblown energy is infectious and Jeannie can’t help but get swept up in it, sashaying towards the record cabinet to find some old disco to play. It seems fitting for the energy the night has begun to take on. 

The moment the needle hits the vinyl and the drum synths hit the air, Jeannie hits what is now the dance floor--the small open space between the TV and the furniture of her combined living and dining room. 

She glides over and extends her hand, bowing like a perfect gentleman, urging Jack to get up and join her. 

Jack grasps it in his own still-gloved hand and springs up in the blink of an eye. Here, unlike in the gym, he’s not so nervous. Despite the lack of physical space in which to move, he finally feels free to do so. 

The two take turns trading moves, and it’s fun and lighthearted. Jeannie doesn’t have to worry about if she looks cool and sexy (but never slutty) the way a girl “ought” to look and Jack doesn’t have to worry about whether or not he looks like a sissy. 

At some point, the dancing devolves into the sort of whirling kids do on a playground, with both hands clasped, until they stumble-collapse back onto the couch. 

Jeannie lands, laughing all the while, onto Jack’s lap, flinging out her hands and grasping at his shoulders for stability.

Jack, whose laughter was at first chorused with her own, abruptly stops. 

He looks down, and sees two partially exposed thighs on either side of his hips. His hands are held up halfway, in a sort of “I surrender”/”don’t shoot” position, with the fingers vaguely curled in suspended motion, as if unsure what they should do. 

Jeannie quickly takes note of the silence and all the points of contact and lacking contact between the two of them and looks up, wiping a happy tear from her eye.

“Oh what a scandal,” Jack mumbles with a strange mix of sincerity and insincerity, his voice a parody of refinement, despite his somewhat detached and bewildered tone. 

Jeannie grabs his still suspended hands, bringing them down so that they hover closer to her legs. She’s not as much of a blusher as Jack, but now, her face lights up with a soft and spreading pink. 

“How improper,” she whispers back, with the same posh affectation. 

She swallows and closes her eyes, working up the courage to let loose the words that she’s never uttered but so desperately wishes to. “Wanna...start a real scandal?” she starts, inhaling deep and tense before continuing. “Aren’t you...aren’t you tired of being a virgin? I know I am,” she breathes out in a rush.

Jack’s eyes go large, and Jeannie feels a pang of shame, as if he was the very picture of innocence. She’s never heard him talk about sex or even crushes, really. 

Just as she’s about to dive deeper into self chastising, Jack responds with a quiet, “Maybe...no...yeah. Yeah.” 

Jeannie takes another deep breath, this time, somewhat less tense.

“I want my first to be someone I trust,” she explains, now bringing his palms flat against her thighs, suddenly emboldened. “Do you trust me, Jack?” 

He nods, slow, but hard and emphatic, the curls in front of his face bobbing. 

“Say it then. Let me know, and we’ll try it. Say no to this, and we’ll just chill,” she says, voice soft and kind, but eyes filled with the slight pain of letting one’s yearning meet possible rejection. Jack fiddles ever so slightly with the edges of her skirt.

“Yes,” he responds, strangely serious and terse and full of conviction, as if on a mission. 

The truth is, that’s exactly what whatever this is has become in his mind. A mission. To test who he is. To prove who he is. To see that he can be happy, that he can make Jeannie happy. So he won’t lose her. So he won’t be alone. So he won’t be left behind. 

Chris is right, he doesn't have to be alone. And he doesnt need someone like Christopher, either. He doesn't have to be the sort of person Christopher is. 

Not--not that there’s anything wrong with being that way, he silently chides himself (except for, well, maybe the threat to one’s soul--not that that’s real) but well--it’s fine for other people. Other people--if that’s them, then that’s just fine, he supposes. But does it have to be him? Does it absolutely have to? That’s what he wants to know.

And hell, he’s a little curious about all the fuss is. About women. He knows it’s just homophobia, but people always say, “You can’t knock it till you try it.” 

And well? It feels absurdly maddening to not have the faintest clue what everyone around you is on about. It’s as if everyone speaks a different language. 

Here and now, Jack is willing to learn. 

Nothing really feels daunting right now, anyway. His eyes feel more open than they’ve been in a while and all he wants right now is to be touched. By somebody, anybody. 

His body has always lived so disconnected from his mind, and he just wants someone to screw the two back together. 

He doesn’t even feel insecure right now, and for him, that’s so rare that he would never pass up the opportunity to capitalize on confidence. It feels like a drug, like how he’d imagine cocaine to feel. 

“Well um. Alrighty then!” Jeannie says, producing a condom from her bra with a magician’s flourish and a hesitant smile. 

Jack feels his throat constrict a bit, as if he’s having an allergic reaction (or as if he were about to cry). He blinks deliberately as if to erase his nerves, but Jeannie nearly places the small square back where it came from.

“I’m just gonna go to the bathroom quickly,” Jack says, voice overly bright, waving his hands in reassurance. 

Jeannie gives a faint “Yeah, sure!” with similarly attempted cheer as he scurries off.

Okay then. Okay. So, clearly the girls from earlier were the source of Jeannie’s little hat trick, and all that giggling from their little pack wasn’t for nothing. Perhaps--well, clearly-- there was a degree of premeditation here. That’s--that’s fine, though. He supposes that he’s--he’s Jeannie’s boyfriend, now, isn’t he? Something like that? And this is what boyfriend’s want to do with girlfriends, isn’t it?

As much as this could be counted as their first date, and thus, a bit fast, he’s known the girl outside of this little white room for far longer. So, this is only natural. The logic of it all occurs to him in flashes, barely-sticking in his foggy-bright brain. 

Whatever, let everything slide away, that’s the way. When in doubt, blank out. 

Locking the door, he considers his only real worry: that he won’t be able to get it--or keep it, for that matter-- up. 

He has a few minutes to ensure, as best as possible, that that particular catastrophe doesn’t come to pass. 

He peels off his gloves quickly with his teeth, and spits in his hand, pragmatically getting to work at a little blood flow. 

It’s not exactly difficult or complicated. Even thinking the word, “sex” is enough to pique his body’s interest. The thought of being wanted is arousing in and of itself. 

Even that word...want. Want want want. 

Certain words just stick in Jack’s brain. Abandoned. Love! Abomination. Want! Desire! 

They can be picked at and picked at like scabs. And the blood just flows, like relief or despair.

Jeannie wants me. Jeannie loves me. The words flicker in his mind’s eye like the intertitles of a silent movie. White, glowing serif, flickering in the black, in the darkness. 

They nauseate him, and yet, at the same time, fill him with a pleasure that makes his entire being feel like a series of bright stuttering glitches. 

To be honest, he could replace Jeannie’s name with anyone’s in this situation. Saying the words to himself would still feel like an electric shock. 

Christopher wants me. Christopher---Christopher loves me. 

Fuck. The jolt of pleasure those words give is enough to jolt him fully awake. 

He feels himself leaking into his hand, but well, it’s just a mechanical matter. Of course. Simply mechanical cause. Simply mechanical effect. Nothing to do with Chris. 

He can’t think about him right now, not with Jeannie surely and rightfully growing impatient by the minute. 

In his mind’s eye, he sees dark eyes like portals and a strong hand that grips his own, just like earlier tonight. The eyes, the hands, they appear as an invitation. 

One that Jack declines, naturally. He may not have declined clearly enough, earlier today. But he’s declining now. 

“I am saying yes to Jeannie”, he mentally repeats to himself a few times over as he washes his hands thoroughly. 

“Sorry. I needed to catch my breath. I was feeling a little anxious is all,” he says quickly upon exiting the door. 

Jeannie whips her head towards him so quickly that her hair ends up in slight disarray. She flashes Jack a tight, slightly hysterical smile, probably mirroring his own. They look at eachother like the last passengers on a shipwreck, going down fast. 

Cheers to an end. Or a new beginning in the deep. A baptism. 

He keeps his eyes on her face as he approaches, not daring to look elsewhere while she’s looking at him like that. Rapt, determined eyes and a fake-easy smirk. 

From what he can see, Jeannie is only in her underwear. If he would have the guts to look, he’d see that it’s nothing fancy. Just a simple nude t-shirt bra from The Gap and matching seamless boyshorts. 

Her legs are folded under her and her hands are folded over her knee. It’s a pose that’s almost hilariously too prim and too proper for the present situation. 

Everyone is trying to act natural, but nothing is. 

Privately, both would admit that they assumed sex worked like a switch: that you’d just know what to do when the time came. But here they are, and the clock just keeps ticking on, the right timing slipping away like sand by the second. 

Jack and his long legs make quick work of the little distance from the bathroom to the couch, until he can clamber over the arm, walking his knees over the cushions to where Jeannie sits with baited breath. 

It’s unclear who reaches out first, but soon, both of their arms are out, and then both of their hands are melded together with the sticky glue of anxious sweat. It’s cold. They’re both so cold, with gooseflesh prickling everywhere. 

It doesn’t matter, though. They squeeze each other's hands, regardless, with a grounding force, fevered in intensity despite the chill. 

No one has broken eye contact. But even in various states of undress, it isn’t painfully awkward to flay each other with a gaze like this. It’s the everyday practice of lifelong best friends. 

Jeannie, who has evidently been in an instigational mood this night, speaks up first. 

“Do you want me to take this off, already?” she asks, head tilted, tentatively fondling a bra strap. 

“Uh, yeah, sure. Whatever you want, whatever’s good!” Jack replies in what sounds suspiciously like his customer-service voice at work. Soft and restrained. Meek and approachable. Agreeable.

As Jeannie reaches back to unclasp the undergarment, Jack suddenly realises that he’s still fully decked out in evening wear (minus the shoes). To equalize things, he begins quickly tearing off his suit jacket and pants, while Jeannie delicately folds her arms in front of herself, rubbing at her goosebumps with absent-minded fingertips.

They both seem to silently agree on keeping their underwear for now: Jeannie with her modest boyshorts and Jack with his simple black boxer briefs. 

He’s about to start unbuttoning his white shirt when he remembers Christopher’s number scrawled so recklessly across his skin. Oof, imagine explaining that? Seems like a potential moodkiller. 

“Hey Jean, um...mind if I leave this on? I’m uhh...feelin a lil frazzled and well-,” he starts, rubbing at his arms uneasily and glancing away, when he suddenly feels a pair of hands stilling the repetitive motion. 

“It’s okay if you’re feeling shy, Jackie, we can start just like this,” says Jeannie in the most understanding voice she can muster, though it quavers ever so slightly with what could just as easily be annoyance as it could be anticipation or anxiety. 

Jack forces himself not to read into it--not now, when something important is finally happening to him!

Instead of obsessing over Jeannie’s tone, he can’t help but burst into laughter at just how absurdly far from suave he is. He tilts his head up at the ceiling, closing his eyes with the force of it. 

Honestly, it might just be an effort to not look at Jeannie’s breasts or anything else for that matter. He doesn’t want to be disrespectful, or to get psyched out somehow by taking in the full reality of the situation. 

Jeannie whines a little, without seriousness: “Jaaack for Christ’s sake, focus!” 

“Jeannie-baby, that’s the problem, precisely the fact that I am focusing! I can’t help but focus on how I’m just a little ridiculous is all,” he replies, cracking open one eye and smirking at her playfully aghast face. 

“Oh shut up, we’re both a little ridiculous. We can be ridiculous together,” she pronounces, swinging her legs back over his, and placing what’s probably that condom from earlier (Jack can’t be bothered to look) on the pillow next to them, ever so hesitantly. 

In the back of Jack’s mind, a cruel little voice giggles that she isn’t far off from the truth...they really are ridiculous together. Like this. It simply cannot work and--He puts a lid on that voice. He dismisses it as more of his day to day, run of the mill anxiety. 

He’s still excited, both in his lightly buzzing mind and in his touch-starved body, after all. So then, those little whispers can’t be right. Right?

Well, right now, he’s just eager to pass through the metaphorical-but-might-as-well-be-literal veil of what some call purity--separation that has eaten at him like a knife and loneliness that eats his bones into swiss cheese. 

He’s ready to emerge on the other side, emerge into the holy of holies, and metamorphose into the allegedly real adulthood of carnal knowledge. He’s ready to glimpse a real future where love with a woman who loves him is possible. 

Every little touch might as well be the addition of a new white plank to this picket fence fantasy of normalcy. 

That is--until the touching starts getting serious. 

Quick as lightning, everything seems to crash. 

Jack’s back in reality. His pants lose any hardness they once contained, and his breathing slows alongside his heart rate. He draws back from where he had his face buried in Jeannie’s long hair and looks her in the eye with an expression of thinly veiled surprise. 

She bunches her brows, confused at why he would look so shocked over the girl in his lap touching between his legs--and through clothes, to boot! 

Jack couldn’t begin to answer her silent question--he’s just as confused as she is about why on earth he had to get all deer in the headlights all of a sudden. 

He bites his lip and shudders through the bubbling-up of a minor laugh-attack, until he can speak again. 

“J-Jean, I don’t know, I guess I’m not ready for that yet. Let’s focus on you first. How bout it, hot stuff? Can I touch you instead?” he tries, voice vibrating all jittery, as if he were still laughing under it all. 

She starts to frown slightly, clearly unconvinced by his attempt at flirtation, but gives a confused little, “Yes--”.

But then cuts off in a gasp, grasping onto Jack’s back when he decides to prove his dedication to this new goal of focussing on her pleasure first. 

He has, ever so gently, slipped his long, thin, chill-tipped fingers down the front of Jeannie’s underwear. Tentatively, he passes through faintly coarse hair, to wetness and silky-warm skin. He slowly skims along her lips, experiencing the strange new sensation against his fingers, feeling her twitch. 

“This ok?” he whispers, muffled by the hair he’s nuzzling himself back into, voice pleasant yet somewhat detached. 

Jeannie lets that latter bit go, seeing as she’s never been fingered before and what the hell, she’s not about to ask Jack to stop before he’s even started. 

“Yeah that’s all right,” she breathes out, equally quiet as she mirrors his actions by burying her face in his uneven curls. 

The two of them breathe in the familiar and unfamiliar smells of each other--the familiar scent of each other’s bodies mingled with the slight musk the air has picked up. 

“What do you want?” Jack asks. He has a vague idea of what might possibly feel good for a woman--I mean, google is free after all. But he wants to know what Jeannie likes. His fingers have already come to rest at the raised tissue of her clit. 

After a pause, she mumbles, “Little circles to the left” into his neck, where she’s pressing the ghost of a kiss. 

He obliges, starting painfully slow and soft, just in case, while her breath quickens. His is still steady. Everything about him feels utterly boringly calm and collected. Wasn’t sex supposed to be exciting? Wasn’t being close to a woman like this supposed to make him eager and full of some sort of want? To get closer and closer to her? 

Jack’s fine at the distance they have right now, thank you very much. Even this feels a touch too close. Not that it’s gross or anything but...being this close feels almost...pointless? Unnecessary. Uncompelling. He just feels painfully neutral about it. But well. Jack wants Jeannie to know he still cares. Despite his earlier startled reaction. That’s point enough to not just bail. 

If this is a pity-handjob, Jack is loath to admit it.

“Speed? Am I pressing too hard” he inquires. 

“N-no, you can press a little more. And like, go a little faster,” she shudders out, trembling at the thighs the moment he begins to follow her instructions. 

Jack maintains the pace and pressure for a good minute, and then she’s already pulsing under his hand, bringing a hand up to bite herself quiet. 

As soon as she recovers, from her slump over his shoulders, she pulls back to kiss him on the lips. It’s remarkable that somehow they never started there. 

Jack tries to move with her, but it feels like kissing the back of his hand. 

She parts her lips against his, and he follows the leader, letting her tongue tease the tip of his own. 

Jack thinks the taste is...boringly human. Familiar and dull and grounded as the smell of an old sweater. And the texture...why do people do this if it’s so...slimy? There are none of those fireworks he’s heard so much about. 

But when Jeannie pulls back again for air and looks into his eyes, he sees that hers are all aglow. 

And he feels sick. His mind clamors with cries of panic over what he has done. 

“Your turn now?” she ventures, not daring to try touching him again. Not down there. 

Jack knows he has to get out of here right this instant. He feels viscerally that he has overstayed his welcome.

“Uhhm...next time. For sure! Haha...my parents...I gotta...you know,” he stammers, already dressing, leaving in slight disarray that would be funny to Jeannie if she wasn’t so bewildered. 

“Iloveyoubye!” he calls, on his way out, accidentally slamming the door behind himself in his hurry. It wasn’t a lie. But it makes him feel like he’s started to sink. 

Jeannie sits watching the door, heart beating quicker and quicker when in regular circumstances, it should be calming down.

Unbeknownst to Jack, his own heartbeat is synched up with hers, rapid and relentless as Gotham rain, pulsing with anxiety and adrenaline alike.

Before he shrugs on his suit, he pushes up his sleeve, and punches the number into his phone. 

It rings. And then a voice on the other side, languid and rough, laced with warm honey, speaks his name with barely concealed glee. 

“Jack?”

Jack takes a deep breath and then takes the plunge: “Where can I meet you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmk what you think of the new formatting!

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to volunteer as a beta reader!  
> Do note: my forte is actually poetry, not fiction  
> And YES the title will be explained, eventually


End file.
